Page 64 of The Bodyguard

He kissed her then—not like earlier, not like the wall and fire and possession. This was slower. Deeper. But no less claiming. No less hungry. When he pulled back, her hands were fisted in his tee-shirt, and her heartbeat had thundered up into her throat.

He said nothing else. He didn’t need to. Because at that moment, it wasn’t about power. It was about permission. And she’d given it.

* * *

Maya returned to the loft, and the message went out at 3:18 p.m.

Andi watched it go out from the corner of the screen. A simple calendar ping. A last-minute location change for a fictional donor meet—flagged urgent and unlisted, sent through an encrypted channel only a handful of staffers had access to.

The bait.

Maya leaned back in her seat across from her, folding her arms. “And now we wait.”

Andi nodded, the unease curling in her stomach like a live wire. “This feels… wrong.”

“Welcome to intelligence work,” Maya said dryly. Andi arched an eyebrow. “I read a lot of political and espionage thrillers. You wait. You watch. And you hope your trap’s more tempting than the target’s pride.”

Andi leaned back in her chair, fingers steepled beneath her chin. “You’re okay being the bait?”

“I volunteered.”

“You didn’t have to.”

“Yes, I did.” Maya met her gaze. “Because you’re not the only one they’re coming for now. And because if someone on this team is dirty—I want to be the one who flushes them out. I brought these people to you. I vetted them. If one of them is bent, it’s my responsibility.”

There was a reason Maya was her chief of staff. The loft was quiet except for the low hum of the computer and the faint tick of the wall clock. They sat like that for a long minute, neither speaking, both watching the screen as Cerberus’s surveillance overlay tracked pings and messages bouncing across the city’s encrypted data net.

Mitch stood in the corner, silent, arms folded across his chest. Watching. Andi felt the burn of his gaze like a brand against her skin.

She was trusting him to call the shot. To pull the trigger—figuratively or otherwise—if someone bit.

The moment dragged. Stretched.

Then, a ping.

Mitch moved first, already beside the monitor as a string of unrecognized data lit up the upper right-hand feed. A sync. Unscheduled. Unauthorized. And coming from a name she knew.

Brian Lennox.

“Got him,” Mitch said.

Andi stood slowly, heart climbing into her throat.

Maya didn’t say a word. She just reached into her pocket and thumbed her Cerberus-issued comm. “We’ve got a fish on the line.”

Andi’s eyes met Mitch’s.

Game on.

15

MITCH

The tension in the loft had weight now. Not just the kind that lived in Andi’s posture or the way she gripped her coffee mug too tight—but the tactical kind. The kind Mitch could feel in his spine. A storm gathering behind the walls.

Cerberus hadn’t just identified the leak. They’d started pulling the thread—and what they’d found underneath was worse than he expected.

Brian Lennox wasn’t working alone.

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